News from the glass and refractory ceramics world

Saint-Gobain’s new glass plant at Bhiwadi in Rajasthan, India, is set to open next week. The $185-million facility will help the company strengthen its position in India’s glass market. The plant has a capacity of nearly 1,000 tons of glass per day.

The Dubai-based Mara Foundation has concluded plans to establish a $200-million glass plant in Nigeria to boost employment generation in the country. The Foundation, owned by Ashish J Thakkar of Dubai, has equally floated an ongoing $8 million Mara mentor one-on-one entrepreneur initiative in Nigeria. Construction work at the glass plant in Lagos has begun and production will commence in 2016.

Funds advised by Triton have successfully closed the acquisition of Seves Group. The Seves Group, headquartered in Florence, has become one of the world’s leading manufacturers of high voltage insulators for power transmission, distribution lines and substations, glass blocks for architectural and interior design applications. Seves Group operates production facilities, commercial offices and R&D locations in Europe, Asia and South America and employs more than 2,500 people worldwide.

Production at Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, where total operations were recently shut due to cyclone Hudhud, has begun with hot metal rolling out from blast furnace-3. One of the four coke oven batteries were also successfully charged and restored. Remaining furnaces would be tentatively fired in sequence. VSP has four coke oven batteries that produce fuel for three blast furnaces; once down it is very difficult to restore these batteries.